In a cluster of network devices, there is often one master network device and multiple slave network devices connected to client devices. The master network device is often responsible for performing one or more functions (e.g., authentication, encryption, etc.) on packets generated by the client devices or incoming packets destined for the client devices. However, because the master device performs these functions on each packet generated by/destined for each client device, it is possible to overload the master device. In such scenarios, the master device becomes a bottleneck and reduces packet throughput.